The choice of presidential candidates for the 2000 elections has
entered the “Twilight Zone” of cruel ironies. As Republicans created
and then put forth a “Trojan horse” presidential candidate, George W.
Bush — a nice man of considerable elitist pedigree but limited
experience, if not maturity — to lead them to the promised land,
Democrats countered with a proven criminal, Al Gore, a man who not only
cannot tell the truth but who, along with Bill and Hillary Clinton, sold
out the nation’s national security to the highest foreign bidders –
China and Russia. It is therefore poetic justice that the electoral
process has ground to a halt in a divine, albeit temporary rejection of
either candidate becoming our 43rd president.

In the days after the presidential election, God must be swallowing
hard in deciding whether to appoint the “fraternity boy” or the “felon”
to lead the country into the 21st century after eight years of scandal
and moral decay.

Indeed, the reaction and actions of the two candidates and their
political parties to the current electoral deadlock only fuels the
already obvious conclusion that the next president will be rendered
impotent to lead this great nation in any direction — right or left.

When it became clear last Wednesday morning that the election would,
by law, hinge on a recount of the Florida vote, Mr. Bush, showing
indiscretion, not only immediately proclaimed himself the victor, but
also set out to name his cabinet, no matter what. And, despite previous
claims that he is his own man, Mr. Bush summoned his father’s previous
top government officials to help insure that the Florida vote remained
his. Mr. Gore, for his part, immediately enlisted a coterie of carnival
salesmen from Jesse Jackson to Kendall Coffey, the former Clinton-Gore
administration U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida — who
not only lost his government job over a “biting episode” of a stripper’s
arm, but also, after being forced into private practice, had somehow
convinced the Gonzalez family into believing during the Elian saga that
he had no actual or potential conflict of interest in representing them
against Attorney General Janet Reno’s Justice Department. Gore sent
these icons of justice into the legal battle for Florida with a bevy of
planned political maneuvers and lawsuits.

Certainly, for love of country, neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Gore is King
Solomon. Mr. Bush, through his father’s former court patrician, James
Baker, finds it “unfitting” for the citizens of Florida to have their
votes counted by hand, and has himself filed a now-failed federal
lawsuit to prevent the indignity of noblemen dirtying their palms. Mr.
Gore, who is himself readying even more lawsuits and court appeals to
the Democrat-controlled Florida Supreme Court, sent Jesse Jackson into
the streets of Miami to whip up blacks and others over allegations of
racism in denying the vice-president the election.

As both sides struggle for advantage — rather than simply sitting
down to come up with a “fail safe” system to count the votes that all
Americans can agree on — the nation is the victim. With the admitted 2
to 5 percent inaccuracy of machine counting, what does Mr. Bush have to
fear in allowing for a thorough, statewide hand count, with
mutually-agreed safeguards to prevent cheating, particularly since
overseas absentee ballots — mostly from the military — are likely to
tip the election to him in any event? And, what does Mr. Gore think
when he sends demagogues like Jesse Jackson into a racially diverse
tinderbox like Florida to whip up hatred of whites and others in order
that the Matt Lauers, Bryant Gumbels and Katie Courics of the press world
can twist public sentiment in favor of continued leftist control of The
White House?

Without a system for counting ballots which all sides can agree is
fair and honest, the next president — whether Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore –
will have neither the legitimacy nor public support to lead the nation.
Indeed, the principled conservative leader and former Republican
presidential candidate, Ambassador Alan Keyes, has correctly pointed out
the obvious. If Mr. Bush and the Republicans “ram through” the
machine-counted vote certification of Florida’s Republican secretary of
state and proclaim victory, will they have won the battle but lost the
war? The next four years of a Bush presidency will have only a
Republican veneer over a Democrat agenda. This is because in an effort
to govern and pass legislation on Social Security, health care, tax
cuts, missile defense and other issues, a President Bush — to avoid
intense Democrat backlash and attack — would likely have to “cave in”
to leftist demands in an almost evenly divided Congress. What then,
Ambassador Keyes asks, will Republicans and conservatives have won?